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Animating the head

…Now we have the arms and the rest of the body animating.…Let's take a look at that, and you can see we've got pretty good motion for the arms.…Now let's go ahead and do the last little bit of it.…We're going to animate the characters head, so let's turn on the head.…Let's just take a look at the walk.…As you can see the head is very, very stiff.…Take a look at this from the front, just to see.…And as you can see, the head is really, not moving at all.…So, what we need to do, is just, basically, get the head moving forward.…

So, as the character walks, she's going to be looking in the direction of her walk.…So, it's a pretty simple concept here.…Now, this will change, depending on what, upon the scene.…Characters do tend to move their heads around as…they walk to look at things and stuff like that.…But at this point, let's just take a look at her…from the front, and let's go ahead and set a key frame for this.…So let's get her head looking forward.…And also we've got this kind of nice line here, and let's play with that.…

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Author

Released

12/20/2013

The fundamentals of great character animation are rooted in posing your model in a way that reads true, animating from pose to pose to mimic natural movement, and simulating convincing dialogue. Start here to learn the skills all beginning animators need to know to bring their characters to life, regardless of software or style. Author and animator George Maestri first teaches you how to position your model and create realistic poses that tell stories and consider balance and weight. Next, you'll take those poses and animate between them in what's called pose-to-pose animation. Then you'll get your character moving in a basic walk cycle, add expression to the face, and incorporate dialogue. Finally, you'll learn how to tie all the fundamentals together in a scene complete with pose-to-pose animation and dialogue.